In 'The Tinker Girl', a family saga about women for women, the protagonist Cate, battles against poverty, gender and class to save a highland estate and its people from ruin. The 1899 setting is Kevinishe, a village on the west coast of Scotland, ruled by the MacNishe lairds, their wealth coming from the distilling of a renowned single malt whisky.



The book follows the journey of a self-reliant, spirited orphan girl growing to womanhood, weathering highs and lows in her search for security and a family of her own. Intelligent, determined and focused, she attracts, upsets, and succeeds. She fights industrial and rural poverty, shares the lot of women with their struggle for employment and confronts the rigid social conventions of the era. The second book of the trilogy, already begun, will cover the war years and end in the thirties. The third will take the family through the Second World War.